Venezuelan news site El Pitazo and Colombian news director Darío Arizmendi were recognized by the Ortega y Gasset awards from Spanish newspaper El País.
El Pitazo won the award for the best multimedia coverage for its report "La generación del hambre” (The generation of hunger), as announced by El País on April 11.
(Screenshot)This project was conducted by the journalist Johanna Osorio Herrera and had the support of the journalistic platform Connectas.
"This is the first time that a Venezuelan media outlet has won the Ortega y Gasset and, of course, it is a source of great pride and satisfaction for those of us at El Pitazo," César Batiz, director of El Pitazo, told the Knight Center.
"It is a work that is the result of this confluence of various factors of teamwork, but also to clearly have the focus of what we were going to do from the start. And, of course, we must also highlight the collaboration and support of Connectas in this project," he said.
The report aims to reflect the impact of the economic, political and social crisis of the government of President Nicolás Maduro on the growth, nutrition and welfare of Venezuela's youngest children.
"Los muertos que me habitan” (The dead that inhabit me) is the report published in the Spanish magazine 5W that won the prize for the best story or journalistic investigation. This project that is part of a Ruido Photo project is signed by Agus Morales, director of 5W, and the Spanish photographer Eduardo Ponces. They tell the story of a man who decided to bury the bodies that the Mediterranean Sea casts to the coasts of Tunisia.
The award for the best photograph was given to Reuters agency photographer, Vincent West, for an image from his coverage of the massive feminist march on March 8, 2018 in Bilbao, Spain.
And the award in recognition of a professional career was given to the veteran Colombian journalist Darío Arizmendi.
Arizmendi is news director of the channel Caracol, was founder and director (1971-1990) of the newspaper El Mundo de Medellín and plenipotentiary ambassador of Colombia in the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in 1989.
In the 1980s, Arizmendi had to leave Colombia after suffering several assassination attempts, according to El País.
The awards will be presented on May 9 at a ceremony in Madrid, Spain. Each prize has an endowment of 15 thousand euros and will receive a work by the Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida.
This award, founded by El País in 1984 in honor of the journalist José Ortega y Gasset, is an acknowledgment of the journalistic works in Spanish that seek rigor, independence and the defense of freedoms, according to El País.
